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Studio XPS 13 laptop and intermittent touch pad buttons
Hi all-
I have a 3 month old Studio XPS 13 laptop which has a row of touch pad buttons along the top of the keyboard. I am referring to only the touch pad buttons along the top of the keyboard for turning wifi/bluetooth on/off, the stop/play/ff/rewind controls, the volume controls for the speakers, and the eject button for the DVD drive. I'm not referring to the touchpad that is used as a mouse pad. That works fine.
About twice a month so far, the touch pad buttons simply stop working. They're illuminted, but when I touch them, none of them work. Further, when the buttons fail, they usually fail with the wifi turned off, which unfortunately removes the ability of my computer to wirelessly connect to the internet. I'm not sure what gets them working again, but after about 15 minutes of rebooting, them suddenly start working again. And then they work fine for a few weeks until the problem rears its head again a couple of weeks later.
Questions: 1) Any idea what's going on? How do I fix this problem if it happens again? 2) If these buttons happen to fail either permanently or for a long period of time, is there any way to perform the funcitons of the buttons through another menu or method? For example, when the buttons stop working, they always fail the wifi "off." Is there a way to turn the wifi "on" without using those touch pad buttons?
Thanks! Steve
steveb321
16 Posts
0
April 16th, 2009 16:00
bump........no suggestions?
GaryReger
27 Posts
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April 16th, 2009 22:00
There is a bios update in Dell Support that seemed to help (not ready to say solved) this problem for me.
ThatGuy1_e7ba40
33 Posts
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April 22nd, 2009 07:00
Well I am having this issue with a dell studio 15 and it just annoys me so much having paid allot of my hard earned money for it, Now when this first happened to me I was also having the media eject key getting stuck for a few minutes at start-up a well known issue with the studio 15 and after reading for fixes on the internet the only temporary fix I have found was to shut down the laptop remove the battery and hold down the power button for 30 seconds put the battery back in turned it on and it worked, but a week later all of the buttons stopped working again so I tried the battery remove trick and it worked but only for a week then I had to reapply the battery remove trick.
So yes basically shut down the laptop remove the battery and hold down the power button for 30 seconds put the battery back in turned it on and see if it works.
Good luck.
steveb321
16 Posts
0
April 22nd, 2009 16:00
Thanks guys. I tried the BIOS update, but it's too soon to tell if that fixes anything. If it happens again, I'll try the battery removal process.
limcpi
1 Message
0
May 23rd, 2009 08:00
Removing the battery worked for me.
Thinking back, it seems to have occured for me after long periods of charging the battery.
steveb321
16 Posts
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May 23rd, 2009 09:00
Thanks. The BIOS update mentioned earlier in the thread did not work for me. I'll try the battery removal "trick."
sshoop
3 Posts
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October 12th, 2009 15:00
I had a similar problem with my month old Studio XPS 16. The battery removal fixed it. Hopefully, this is not a reoccurring problem.
steveb321
16 Posts
0
October 12th, 2009 16:00
Unfortunately, every once in a while, maybe once or twice per week, it still does it. Removing the battery seems to do the trick, but it's kind of a pain.
YamiK
1 Message
0
October 27th, 2011 08:00
I'm having the same problem. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Mine actually spuradically go on and off.
Suddenly the wifi symbol shows on screen and turns on/off or I'll press the volume up/down/mute button and the whole thing goes crazy, turning the wifi off, skipping songs, etc. It's frustrating! I can't get any work done! I'll be emailing a large attachment for my internship and suddenly the internet goes off, my browser says and error happened, and I have to start over.
I've made sure I'm not accidently doing something to mess with the other buttons when pressing but it still messes up.